Don't forget where we come from

Posted
Friday, February 9, 2018 12:05 am

To the editor:

Has President Donald Trump never been to a hospital, nursing home or assisted living facility? If he has, then he should know that these places would lose most of their staff if their immigrants were removed from this country.

Those who take care of the elderly who can no longer take care of themselves work long hours for low pay. They tend to be exceptionally hardworking, intelligent and quite literate. One such woman from Ghana, West Africa — who speaks three languages, and whose English is much better than Trump’s — cannot realistically be judged as inferior.

In the past, Trump has criticized Mexican immigrants. But many rich white men in the produce industry love that many of them are here illegally. That’s why these employers can get away with paying these workers $40 a day to pick tomatoes.

The United States has a long history of immigration. Though the original inhabitants of this land — the Apaches, Comanches, Iroquois, etc. — probably wish they had kept the original immigrants out.

Immigrants have long been targets of bigots. This is ironic since anyone not a member of a Native American tribe is a descendant of immigrants. But that hostility has become greater as the immigrants’ skin has become darker.

Trump says he prefers immigrants from Norway. People there have complete health care coverage, better salaries and pensions, more job security, and more time off from work. I don’t think many Norwegians want to come here.

As for the Dreamers, I can’t see how any decent person could advocate deporting someone who’s lived here since childhood and would be like a foreigner in their country of birth.

Bigots don’t acknowledge the benefits of diversity, but most of what is great about this country is the result of it. Imagine a country without most of its popular music, the banjo, traffic lights, the gas mask and peanut butter — all invented by African-Americans.

But many don’t recognize contributions from white immigrant groups. Remember the famous Archie Bunker lines, “You can have your chink food. I’ll order something American, like a pizza.”

The same country that gave us that food gave us a family that would give us Francis Albert Sinatra, who said all of our different groups of people, “That is America!”

Have a look up the narrow pathway connecting Arlington Avenue and Kappock Street in Spuyten Duyvil and one might see a steep trail of hideous, uneven pavement snaking between warped side rails bent out of shape. It’s like something out of a Gothic fairy tale.